Sneak Peak at 2011-2012 Jobs in British Archaeology

[Doug]

And there are some excavators earning 25k a year...not many I grant you but a few.

I guess my first question would to be what is your definition of a digger? Maybe we are not talking about the same thing. If we are then my next question is HOW? I would be very interested to learn how someone in the commercial sector makes 25k a year as a digger by working for others. I think lots of people would very interested in that. Do they work of EH HS Cadw? They tend to pay theirs around 19k starting.

I don't think there is as much flexibility as you suggest when you say that archaeologists will ditch a lower paid employer and go and work for a higher paid one......surely not. Most people are much more rational than that and would take into account the length of contract on offer, closeness to home etc etc. Not that that matters to many archaeologists who are just looking for work - any work - rather than negotiating from a position of some security and looking to improve upon it....

I should probably quantify scale. My point was that pay will cluster around certain points because of limits that employers can pay or because they move jobs. Now looking at the distribution you can see that most jobs range within 10-20% of each other. What you don't see is the project manager being offered 60k or the excavator 30k. In that same token you don't see excavators being offered 10k or PM being offered 20k. Jobs that pay less than a third of the average. This is were i think the incentive kicks in for people to change jobs, a boost of 150% on pay to do the same job. Of course you don't see such difference in pay because well people move. Though when you get down to 10% 5% difference, yeah petrol money alone could eat that up so pay stays about the same.

I think we are on the same page as far as not all job choices are determined by money, completely agree with you. I think we don't see it happen much because people do move when its bad forcing the employer to adjust and some employers actually care about their employees and offer them the best wage they can and still be competitive. The top and bottom pays are constrained but I do generally think many employers try to pay what they can.

My whole point is that job postings are a pretty accurate reflection of GENERAL pay conditions because 1. they can only go so high due to market constraints 2. they can only go so low before someone says $#*( that. 3. many employers are not out there to screw people and generally will give what they can which is dictated by the market

I think where all archaeological employment surveys suffer from distortion is taking into account the length of contract.

It is just how you look at it. In the states no one posts jobs as 16k, 25k, 45k, a year for lower level jobs its all $ per hr. You assume you are making money per hour and not over a year. Everyone looks at it as oh 1 week of work that is 40hrs x pay = how much I will make next week. It is also a bit of perspective. Though this is the UK and you bring up a good point and I will bring it up at the next profiling the profession meeting.

[kevin wooldridge]

It is just how you look at it. In the states no one posts jobs as 16k, 25k, 45k, a year for lower level jobs its all $ per hr. You assume you are making money per hour and not over a year. Everyone looks at it as oh 1 week of work that is 40hrs x pay = how much I will make next week. It is also a bit of perspective. Though this is the UK and you bring up a good point and I will bring it up at the next profiling the profession meeting.

Thankyou...I think it does make a difference. People aren't always necessarily on a salary level that respects or recognises their ability or experience, but one that happens to match the job they are doing at that time. If that makes sense.....

[Doug]

Hi Kevin

So some not official updates from PP. This year we are going to be asking some sort of question relating to how long people have had their current jobs, along with skills, experience, etc.

Also, there is going to be a much bigger push to capture self employed archs. Of course while on the train back I thought while we are gathering self employed we could get un-employed as well. In which case the question on emplyoment length should capture everyone. So I will bring that up as well.

I think the PP this year will do a much better job of capturing the range of employment. Though this is all unofficial and it might change due to circumstances. Also, we have to collect data that is compatible with legacy data so there are some constraints in what can be done iwith the budget on hand.

I think the changes, if they happen (no promises) can capture that data you are looking for.

[P Prentice]

cant wait to see it - good luck

[kevin wooldridge]

Maybe at the same time you could try and gather some data on archaeologists who also work across international borders. I recognise there may not be any data with which to immediately compare this class, but it might become more of an issue in the future, especially if more UK archaeologists start expanding their horizons into ther EU and beyond......There i potential here to co-ordinate with Dutch, German, Swedish, Irish, Norwegian, Danish versions of the IfA or Prospect that might also be collating similar data....

[Doug]

Last PP did that. If you look online you can see the whole project and results.

http://www.discovering-archaeologists.eu/

The proposal has been submitted to do so again this year (roughly 20 some countries this time) BUT we don't know if it will happen or not. We will find out if the funding comes through in the next couple of months.

[kevin wooldridge]

Erm...actually what I meant was collating some accurate data!! I note for example that the average mean salary for a UK archaeologist according to the discovering-archaeologists report was a staggering €34,000 pa. Yeah that must be the UK on another planet.....this data is no good to anyone unless it is accurate!!

[Doug]

The UK PP has it at ?23,000 avg. with the midway point at ?20,000 i.e. 50% make above this 50% make below this. In 2007.


It looks like it was converted to euros for 2007. At that point the pound was ridiculously overvalued. Then it was $2.20 to 1?. So I think what you are seeing there is conversion fluctuations. edit- yeah conversion at that time was 1.4-1.5 http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/GBP/hist2007.html which comes out to about 34,000 euro. Strong pound is what is throwing that off.


Right now it is ?1 to 1.24euro which would get 29,000 euro for the average (from 5years ago). Though with Greece tanking that will probably be going up. So actually with increase in salaries you are still looking at an average pay of somewhere in the 30,000 euros for archs.

[Unitof1]

what I told the taxman was that I bearly came away with my tax freshold

[Dinosaur]

Certainly something to aim for, getting up to the industry 'average' before I retire